


Scars

by bluesey182



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, this is to make up for my last fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 18:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20101873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesey182/pseuds/bluesey182
Summary: Talking about some of Jude's scars. In bed.





	Scars

Cardan loved the softness of Jude’s skin. Even after months of sharing a bed with her and being able to touch her freely he still marveled with every touch how soft her mortal skin was. He often soothed her to sleep with gentle strokes along her skin after the stress of being Queen sent her to bed tense--he played it off as caring for her but they both knew he also did it for an excuse to touch her.

It had been a long day of meetings followed by a longer night of revels and after it had ended Jude had promptly collapsed into bed without bothering to change out of her extravagant clothes. With a soft hum from her as confirmation to Cardan’s question, he carefully undressed her and slipped one of his own shirts over her head as a nightgown before he joined her under the blankets. Although her eyes were closed he could tell she was still awake. Perhaps that’s why, running his fingers along the back of her hand, he finally asked her what he’d been wondering since she came to classes one day with her hand in a bandage.

“What is this from?” His voice was as gentle as the fingertip he ran along the scar that went all the way through her hand.

For a moment she didn’t respond and he wondered if perhaps she was asleep after all. But then, “Dain wanted proof I was loyal to him.” Cardan furrowed his brows as Jude opened her eyes to look at him before continuing, “He told me to put a blade through my hand.”

Cardan felt his blood run cold and boil all at once. In an attempt to soothe the anger building inside him, he dipped his head and gently kissed the scar on both sides of her hand. Looking back up at the beautiful creature sharing his bed, he saw her eyes drift closed once more. 

His hand drifted down to her exposed thigh where a crude scar ran across her skin.

“What about here?”

“Locke shot me the night of my sister’s wedding. I had to dig the arrow out and sew the wound closed once I made it back to Madoc’s.” 

He leaned down to brush his lips on that scar as well. After two unpleasant answers to his questions he wondered if perhaps he should stop asking and just go to sleep when he caught from the corner of his eyes the slightest tilt of Jude’s mouth. She  _ liked  _ him kissing her scars.

“And what about here?” He continued, asking about the small stub of her finger.

“Faerie guard bit it off when I was a kid.”

He kissed her finger from the tip to her knuckle. She smiled wider.

"And here?" He asked about a patchy scar on her knee.

"Fell off a bike when I was six."

“And this one?” He ran his finger along the smallest scar under her jaw. She usually shivered at the touch of his fingers on her neck but this time she stilled. Suddenly Cardan regretted asking. He began to tell her she didn’t have to answer when she interrupted him.

“Valerian,” she said so quietly Cardan would have missed it had he not had faerie ears. “Valerian broke into my rooms one night. Held a knife to my throat, strangled me. He would have killed me.” At this her voice broke. “So I killed him first.”

Cardan had guessed Valerian was dead, he just hadn’t known how. Until now.

Pooling in Jude’s eyes, though she turned her head away in an attempt to hide them, were tears. As one spilled down her cheek Cardan swiped it away with his thumb and kissed the scar on her throat. 

“That’s the night I became a killer,” she whispered. Not knowing what to say, Cardan continued to kiss her neck, her jaw, her collarbone. As his mouth brushed her shoulder he felt her fingers thread through his hair.

“He was a bastard anyway,” he murmured against her skin. Beneath him he felt her shoulders begin to shake. He looked up in a panic, thinking she had started sobbing, to find her laughing instead.

“You have no idea,” her voice sounded more solid now--more like the strong, stubborn Jude he knew and loved. “One time he tried to get me to jump to my death from a tower.”

The revelation made Cardan’s blood boil once again but, keeping with the lightness of Jude’s tone, he asked, “And where did our lovely friend end up?”

“Buried behind Madoc’s stables.”

He laughed. In his head he could see Valerian’s reaction to those words which only made him laugh harder--all the while with Jude smiling up at him as he began drawing patterns of her stomach. But then, all too soon, he stilled.

“Jude,” he began.

“You don’t have to say it.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Probably something about all of this,” she gestured to her scars, “being why you had tried to protect me from the cruelty of Elfhame when you banished me. Right?” At his scowl she laughed. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Hush,” he commanded softly as he rolled fully over her. She quickly adjusted herself so her legs were on either side of his hips and her arms hooked behind his head. 

“I’m right, though,” she whispered back. 

“Shut up and let me kiss you.”

Her laughs were cut off as she let their lips meet.

**Author's Note:**

> so idk if jude actually has any scars from the night valerian attacked her but i wanted to include one so they could have that conversation.


End file.
